In honor of Halloween I’ve gone through the Universal Classic Monster Movies. Moving along let’s look at the first modern horror movie. And let’s start by defining what a modern horror movie is. Well, what it isn’t is Frankenstein or Dracula or any make-believe monster. In fact, it isn’t even a more contemporary monster like a zombie in “Night of the Living Dead.” The generation that had lived through World War II and the Korean War and was living under the threat of nuclear annihilation probably couldn’t pretend to be afraid of rubber-masked monsters. What they could fear was the monster that might be living behind the eyes of the boy next door. Insanity was a monster that they knew had broken free before and once loose inflicted real horror on all in its path. So that’s the modern horror movie monster, a homicidal maniac. And before there was the Red Dragon, or Hannibal Lector or Saw there was Norman Bates.

Psycho was based on a novel by Robert Bloch, who wrote genre fiction in Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Mystery categories. It was inspired in part by a truly depraved serial killer named Ed Gein but the details of the story mostly came out of Bloch’s imagination.

But the reason Psycho is the subject of this review is that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to make that movie. Always an innovator and aware of the need to push the boundaries of what was allowable on screen, he produced a film that fit its time. The sexual nature of the relationship between Marion Crane and Sam Loomis is highlighted. The murder scenes although tame by today’s standards are truly frightening. For audiences of that time (1960) some of the scenes would have been shocking.

But Hitchcock didn’t make just a scream fest. The movie is a complete story. Each of the main characters and many of the smaller parts are skillfully crafted with loving detail and come to life on the screen. And one character who has been dead for ten years and only survives inside the tortured brain of a madman get several good lines including the closing soliloquy.

And here is one of the strangest twists of the movie. The monster gets to tell his side of the story. In the scene where Norman Bates brings Marion a meal, he tells his side of the story and even gives his mother’s side too. Obviously, it’s couched in self-delusion and the confusion associated with a split personality but he describes his life as being in a self-inflicted trap that he no longer even tried to escape. And he admitted that he depended on his mother as much as she depended on him. And the portrait we see is personable, sympathetic and pitiable. Of course, this just sets us up for what follows.

Norman’s sexual frustration is illustrated in the voyeurism we are shown and of course the maniacal rage is on display in each of the murders and the attempted murder. When the psychiatrist comes on at the end as a deus-ex-machina, he not only explains the origins of Norman’s psychosis but also reveals that there have been additional women victims of “Norman’s mother.”

And finally, in the soliloquy that ends the dialog, we really get to meet the monster. Mother tells us how sad it is that Norman must be punished and how innocent she is of all the blood. But the dishonesty and the cruelty are on display and at the very last image of “her” we see the monster showing. And the very last image we get is Marion’s car being winched out of the swamp (her coffin being exhumed from her grave).

What do I like about this movie? Everything. The actors are excellent. The dialog is perfect. Even the music and sound effects reinforce the action on the screen. I don’t watch this movie often because I don’t want to wear it out. But it’s the perfect adult horror movie. The only thing that gives it competition is Silence of the Lambs. I find it to be the perfect embodiment of the modern monster. Man.

The follow-on episodes to each of the primary monster movies vary in quality but the one given is that anything with a title that begins with “Abbott and Costello Meet …” isn’t going to be scary. It could be funny, but definitely not scary.

Sort of in a class by itself is the first sequel to Frankenstein, “The Bride of Frankenstein.” This movie has a lot of interesting things going on. The actors who portrayed Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster in the first film reprise their roles here (Colin Clive and Boris Karloff). The script is leavened with a little humor. Some scenes add some human interest to the Monster’s otherwise predictable behavior of grabbing people and things and tossing them about. One of the best known of these is the Blind Man Scene. The Monster escapes from his enemies. He’s been shot and is on the run. He wanders into the cottage of a blind man who welcomes him and treats him with kindness. The Monster is sheltered and his wounds treated. The blind man teaches him to speak and introduces him to bread and wine and even the pleasure of a good cigar. And he learns what music is and he calls the Blind Man friend. Of course, inevitably, reality strikes back and a couple of hunters show up at the Blind Man’s cottage and tell the blind man he’s living with a monster. And somehow, they manage to burn down the cottage before fleeing from the Monster.

Standouts performances in the movie are Dr. Praetorius and Minnie, Elizabeth Frankenstein’s Housekeeper. Dr. Praetorius is a competing mad scientist who has also dabbled in the creation of human life and wants to convince Dr. Frankenstein to create a woman. Minnie is an almost Shakespearean character who combines the qualities of busybody and wise fool with the ability shriek like an air raid siren.

The Monster meets Dr. Praetorius while he is selecting body parts for the Monster’s bride in the catacombs beneath the graveyard. The Dr. offers him wine and a cigar and they become quite chummy. So much so that the Monster becomes Praetorius’ henchman in a plan to kidnap Elizabeth to force Dr. Frankenstein to complete the Bride project.

Appended to the story is a foreword that portrays Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and the Frankenstein authoress (his wife Mary) discussing the story on a stormy night and segueing to the creation of a mate for the Monster. Interestingly, they cast the same actress, Elsa Lanchester, to play both Mary and the Monster’s mate.

The final scene where we see the meeting between the Monster and his prospective bride the atmosphere is bizarre and overwrought to say the least. Suffice it to say that Monster love does not conquer all. The spurned monster decides to blow up the laboratory taking himself, Dr. Praetorius and the Bride “to kingdom come.” But interestingly, he decides to spare Dr. and Mrs Frankenstein. So, once again, the producers decided that a non-literary happy ending was the way to go. Assuming that they realized they would need descendants of Dr. Frankenstein to allow for further sequels I guess you could say this decision was at least monetarily warranted. Artistically, maybe not. It is pretty much acknowledged that the quality of the Frankenstein sequels after the “The Bride” falls off almost asymptotically. The next installment “The Son of Frankenstein” has a few good moments that mostly don’t involve the Monster but otherwise is mediocre. After that the rest of the series is almost unwatchable.

And unwatchable is how I would describe the rest of the sequels and reboots that fill out the Universal Classic Monster movies. The later installments of the Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman and Mummy series are very poor indeed. The Mummy series was not continued after the original film but instead rebooted with the new Mummy character identified as Kharis played by our old friend the Wolfman, Lon Chaney Jr. In these later movies, the Mummy is never given any personality but mutely wanders through each of the movies of this series wrapped in his bandages and chasing ponderously after the protagonists who are murdered one by one for possessing the Scroll of Thoth (or whatever they called it in the later series). I think in the last of the series I remember he is somehow or other running around the bayous of Louisiana hunting the scroll and its owners. In the last scene, he is seen plodding into the swamp until he is lost to sight under the muddy water, apparently ending his undead life far from the deserts of Egypt as a soggy meal for alligators and crawfish. A fitting end.

So, what’s the verdict? Is the Universal Classic Monster series a worthwhile cinematic collection or an embalmed thing that is only noteworthy as a museum piece to be fussed over by academics and fanatics? I vote worthwhile. Granted the movies are antique and the audience surely won’t be scared in the same way your great grandparents were. But the movies still provide the fantasy experience that they originally were designed for. In the same way, a nursery rhyme can still charm children who have never seen lambs and cows and ducks except on a screen so these movies give an archetypal experience of the dark fantasy world they are meant to represent. Dracula is the evil seducer of young innocents. Frankenstein’s Monster is the raging step-child of God. The Mummy is a Promethean character punished forever for attempting to preempt the prerogatives of the gods. Each of these movies is an outdated but enjoyable attempt to entertain an audience with a passion play of what happens when humans are juxtaposed with the darker side of the fantastic. And because of the gap in time since they were made I think that the best audience for enjoying these films are kids. I’d say 9 to 11 is about the optimal age group for maximum effect. That age is old enough not to be scared by the images but not old enough to be jaded by modern movie magic. And come to think of it, I think that’s how old I was when I thought these movies were great fun.

The Invisible Man, to be pedantically precise, is not a monster movie but a science fiction story. H.G. Wells’ tale of a scientist who develops a technique to render the human body (his own) invisible is not really monstrous in a physical sense but because the technique drives the inventor insane we are back in the neighborhood of the Mad Scientist. And since Dr. Frankenstein is then brought to mind we can shoehorn this science fiction story into the genre. Claude Rains (the Wolfman’s father from an earlier chapter of this review) is the Invisible Man. Or rather Claude Rains voice is the star of the movie, since until the very last scene we can’t see his face. But it’s a very good voice. And since often we can’t exactly tell what he’s doing he spends a fair amount of time telegraphing his actions to help us guess what his actions are that the other characters are pantomiming around. And he’s an active fellow. He kills a few people with his bare (invisible) hands. He bludgeons some others and he goes in for some mass murder via railway sabotage. He ends up a rather unsavory fellow. But somehow there remains a somewhat sympathetic core to the character. Based on the people who still try to help him he must have been a good man before his descent into madness. Therefore, we can look at him as a victim of his own scientific curiosity.

All that aside, it’s a fun movie. The scientific intelligence, megalomania and irritable persona of the Invisible Man is juxtaposed against the plodding mediocrity, skeptical common sense and parochial outlook of the English villagers and local constables who are dumbfounded and unbelieving as to the true cause of the strange goings on. Whenever they declare the inexplicable events a hoax the Invisible Man steps in and gives them a painful (and sometimes fatal) object lesson in his reality.

In the thick of these goings on is my favorite supporting character Una O’Connor as the Innkeeper’s wife. She is a wonderfully shrewish landlady whose suspicious and unkind treatment of the Invisible Man throws him off the deep end. She possesses the most remarkable shrieking scream ever recorded on film. She is a national treasure of sorts. And as a tie-in she plays Dr. Frankenstein’s housekeeper in “The Bride of Frankenstein,” another movie where she chews up the scenery and shrieks a blue streak.

Of course, by the end of the movie and after murdering so many innocent people, the Invisible Man has lost almost all of the audience’s sympathy so that it seems just that he should pay the price for his crimes. But he is allowed the touching death scene where he regains his humanity and seemingly his sanity.

So, to reiterate, this is not a monster movie but there is a Mad Scientist and several of our old friends from earlier Universal Monster Movies do show up. It’s basically a tour de force for Claude Rains (or rather his voice). I give it my seal of approval. Good stuff.

So far in this review, I have gone over the “Big Three” of the Classic Monster class. Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman coexisted in a European setting even showing up in each other’ movies. Very cozy. Maybe almost too much of a good thing. I mean after you have the Daughter of Dracula and the Bride and the Son of Frankenstein what’s left, the Wolfman’s Gardener’s Chiropractor? It would almost be a relief to escape from foggy, chilly Central Europe and head for a warmer and dryer climate.

Egypt?

The Mummy presents an intersection of interesting subjects. At the time, it was made (1932) less than 10 years had elapsed since the real-life discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb and the golden artifacts it contained. This discovery along with the supposed “Tutankhamen’s Curse” upon all those who desecrated his tomb re-invigorated the public’s interest in Egyptology. Add to that the fascination with a strange and exotic world such as the Middle East would have presented to Westerners of a century ago. And finally mix this together with a mythical love story to produce a strange fantasy to lure the public with. And the movie was very popular, even in Britain, where the colonial setting was probably of interest.

The story goes like this. A British archeological dig in Egypt uncovers an unspoiled burial site that contains a mummy that was not embalmed but rather buried alive. Markings on the tomb warn any grave robbers that the occupant is a cursed individual and anyone who reads the Scroll of Thoth will perish and unleash an undead horror on the world. So of course, they read the scroll. This activates the long dead mummy of Imhotep, the priest who was punished for trying to use the Scroll of Thoth to revivify his lover Anck-es-en-Amon, the princess whose untimely death brought about this whole tragedy. After driving one of the expedition mad and sending him to an early grave, Imhotep (played by our old friend Boris Karloff) escapes with the scroll and disappears. Ten years later Helen Grosvenor, the daughter of one of the surviving expedition members, is discovered by Imhotep to be the reincarnated spirit of Anck-es-en-Amon. By this time Imhotep has assumed the identity of a modern-day Egyptian named Ardath Bey. He plans to ritually slay Helen, mummify her and use the Scroll of Thoth to revivify her and make her his bride. Pretty creepy.

Helen’s friends and family attempting to foil this plot are laughably ineffective. At the end it takes Helen’s returned memory as Anck-es-en-Amon to appeal to Isis (whose votary she was) to put a stop to the ritual murder. Imhotep is blasted by divine intervention and everyone (who is still alive at this point) lives happily ever after.

One interesting addition to the cast is our old friend Edward Van Sloan as Dr. Muller. In this movie his effectiveness is somewhere between the high competency of Van Helsing in Dracula and the incredible incompetence of Dr. Waldman in Frankenstein. Let’s give him a B- in the Mummy for at least putting up a fight.

I’ve always enjoyed the Mummy. But I limit myself to one viewing every ten years. Let’s face it. A Mummy, even one with a scroll that bestows the power of life and death isn’t that scary. For all it’s flaws the 1990s reboot with Brendan Fraser has a lot more chills in it with man eating scarab beetles and a Mummy that revivifies himself by stealing organs from the living. But the 1930s version is solid entertainment well worth seeing, at least once.

Nowadays urban fantasy has gotten all highfalutin with a bunch of flavors of wolf creatures. There are werewolves and lycanthropes and loup garous and lycans and blutbaden and all other sub-categories of wolf metamorphosing humans. Back in the day there were just werewolves. And the most famous case was Larry Talbot.

Larry was a British ex-pat living in America. He left home after a disagreement with his father. His father was a titled Lord living on the family estate. But when Larry’s older brother died it was time for the prodigal son to return and take up his family responsibility as the heir apparent. As luck would have it, Larry’s arrival home coincided with the arrival of a troop of gypsies outside of the local village. And it was at the gypsy camp that Larry would begin his personal exploration of nocturnal non-domestic canine/human feeding habits. Larry is attacked by a werewolf who during the day is Bela the gypsy fortune teller (interestingly played by Bela Lugosi). Bela wounds Larry but is himself killed by Larry using a silver headed walking stick. The head of the stick is, of course, shaped like a wolf’s head. Larry is carried back to his home where he survives his wound which heals in the shape of a pentagram (the sign of the werewolf!). The killing of Bela becomes part of a police investigation and Larry is suspected but being a nobleman, he is not pestered by arrest or even having to appear before a magistrate. The police inspector is forced to come visit him at the manor and all deference to his status maintained. Meanwhile Larry is starting to feel funny and the next night he turns into a werewolf and goes on a killing spree. After this he is desperate to believe that he is only suffering from nightmares and delusions but the evidence starts mounting up against him. At one point during one of his nocturnal hunts, he is caught in a leg trap. And here he is saved by Bela’s mother. The old gypsy lady feels responsible for Larry’s plight and recites a spell over him that turns him back into a man and allows him to escape the trap. Finally, Larry reaches the end point of his despair when he knows that his next victim is the woman he loves. Luckily (sort of) his father manages to kill Larry with the same silver wolf headed walking stick that Larry used earlier for the same purpose. So, the story ends on this somber scene of father looking down at the son he has just killed. The gypsy woman recites her spell again and we’re supposed to realize that this was the merciful release and the best-case ending for poor Larry Talbot.

In terms of range of acting ability and style the Wolfman is probably the most varied of the Universal Classic Monster Movies. On the one hand we have Claude Rains playing Lord Talbot, Larry’s father. Rains is an excellent actor and also a very polished individual who easily can play a nobleman in a movie. He was also rather short and slight of build. Then there’s Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry. Chaney was an indifferent actor and a very large and tall man with a booming rough voice. He was more at home in a broad comedy such as the pictures he did at Universal with the comic duo Abbot and Costello. In fact, he reprised his role as the Wolfman in the monster spoof, “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” It might be assumed that he would be out of his depth trying to portray a nobleman’s son but he plays the part as a self-made man who grew up in America and reflects the manners and outlook of his adoptive land. He employs a working-class diction and style of speech and comes off as a personable individual with maybe a slightly hot temper. The relation between father and son seems to be cordial, warm and in the spirit of a mutual rapprochement after a youthful revolt against parental authority. Before the disaster occurs to Larry, the atmosphere is of a joyful family reunion. So, these two actors almost exact opposites in appearance, acting style and talent level manage to do a convincing job of portraying themselves as family.

The other important portrayal is the old gypsy woman played by Maria Ouspenskaya. Since her son Bela was a werewolf she understands Larry’s plight and realizes what his fate will be. And being a gypsy of course she has witch-like powers (and a really cool accent). When Larry needs to escape from his wolf form she could recite the following spell to revert him to human form.

“The way you walked was thorny, though no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Now you will have peace for eternity.”

She is the coolest aspect of the movie and provides the atmosphere (along with the fog machine that must have been working overtime for this film) that allows you to think 20th Century England could be infested with werewolves and gypsies.

And finally, the other notable aspect of the movie is the tradition spawned of werewolves transforming during the full moon. Or did it? Actually, in this first Larry Talbot outing the full moon isn’t explicitly mentioned:

Even a man who is pure in heart

and says his prayers by night

may become a wolf when the wolfs bane blooms

and the autumn moon is bright.

Later they change the final line to “and the moon is full and bright.” So here we can see that autumn and wolfs bane is part of the equation. Maybe this restricts it to the Hunter’s or Harvest Moon.

So, do I like the Wolfman? Only parts. I like the beginning and I like the end. But the middle where Larry is fretting over whether he is going crazy isn’t all that good. So, I recommend seeing it at least once but it’s not my favorite for sure.

If Dracula is the King of Monsters, monster royalty as it were, then Frankenstein is the People’s Monster, the Monster of the Proletariat. Everything about him is working class. He is outsized and strong to make him an able worker. His clothing is a workman’s suit. He is dull, brutish, inarticulate and ugly. He recognizes beauty and strives after it but is rejected by the beautiful people and chased away. He is the ultimate step-son.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein’s creation as the ultimate act of human hubris, to pretend to be God. And the Monster punishes Dr. Frankenstein for putting him through Hell.

Okay, so that’s the meta-story, now let’s talk about the movie.

Universal released Frankenstein in 1931. The cast is mostly contract character actors who appeared in most of the B-movies at Universal. Even Dr. Frankenstein was played by a minor star Colin Clive. And of course, the real star, the Monster is an anonymous question mark (?) in the opening credits. Boris Karloff made his name with this movie. And as opposed to Bela Lugosi’s eternal submergence into the part of Dracula, Karloff prospered as the go to monster player at Universal.

The story follows Dr. Frankenstein, first as he creates the Monster and later as the Monster attempts to destroy him. During this we meet the doctor’s fiancée and his aged father “The Baron.” And, of course, there is his lab assistant and part time grave robber Fritz. The hunch-backed sadist (played by Dwight Frye, the same actor who was Renfield in Dracula by the way) is the archetype for every Igor act-alike henchman in every monster movie that ever followed. And there are all those other memorable characters, the Burgomaster, little Maria the girl drowned in the pond, Maria’s father and of course Doctor Waldman played by Edward Van Sloan. If you read the previous post in this series you may remember Van Sloan as the brilliant Dr. Van Helsing the scientist and vampire hunter. In this movie unfortunately, he’s not quite as successful at monster eradication. In perhaps the most inept example of obsessive compulsive behavior ever filmed, we witness Dr. Waldman bungle the job of monster euthanasia. In the preceding scene the Monster, tired of being tormented by Fritz, hangs the hunch-back with a length of chain. Drs. Waldman and Frankenstein immediately suss out the necessity of subduing the Monster before he carries forward this new policy of interpersonal simplification on them. Working together they barely manage to tranquilize the Monster with a hypodermic before he could finish throttling Dr. Frankenstein with his bare hands.

Dr. Frankenstein, now convinced that his creature is too dangerous to live wants to put him down himself but his father and his fiancée arrive in time to interrupt the program. Dr. Waldman convinces him to leave and assures him that the deed will be performed without delay. So far so good, capable older scientist and biologist will dispatch the Monster with a good swift stroke to the carotid or the aorta or whatever, right? Wrong. We are about to witness film history.

The next scene opens on Dr. Waldman in operating room garb standing over the Monster lying on an operating table, seemingly unconscious. Dr. Waldman fiddles with some scalpels, checks the Monster’s vitals and turns aside to make an entry in his journal! I can’t recall the exact words but the paraphrase is something like, “sedation is becoming less and less effective, I must quickly euthanize him before he regains consciousness.” Of course, as soon as he finishes this diary entry and turns back to the job at hand, the Monster awakes and breaks the good doctor’s neck. What the hell! I mean, come on! Forget medical school, how did this guy get through middle school without a body guard? Instead of putting him in charge of monster execution he should have been assigned to spittoon polishing back at the baronial estate of Papa Frankenstein. What a loser.

Well, the story proceeds with the monster going on a killing spree that inexplicably leads him to Dr. Frankenstein’s location. The Monster arrives just in time to disrupt the wedding and harass but for some unknown reason not kill the doctor’s fiancée. Roused by this threat to his planned for wedded bliss, Dr. Frankenstein joins the village mob and follows the Monster’s trail back to the obligatory windmill. Here the tables turn and the Monster kicks his creator’s butt and tosses him off the top of the windmill. One of the windmill’s vanes breaks his fall and he is transported back to the manor. The incensed mob sets fire to the mill and the last we see of the Monster he is trapped under a falling beam and surrounded by flame.

Miraculously the doctor makes a complete recovery and in the last scene the household staff are drinking a toast with the Baron to “a Son of the House of Frankenstein.” Looking at sequels as children, this toast seems to have been amply fulfilled.

So, what’s my conclusion? It’s incredible fun. With so many semi-comical characters it’s hard not to take the movie for what it’s meant to be a wild fantasy. And in that guise, it succeeds. It even somehow cobbles together a happy ending which completely ignores the actual ending of the book. The fact that the main characters are obviously British but are supposed to be a German noble family is inexplicable. The fact that there are no legal or personal repercussions from the Doctor’s creation murdering so many friends and neighbors is equally unexplained. But taken as a fairy tale it works. Silly, yes. Enjoyable, sure. See it if you haven’t already.

Dracula is the King of Monsters. He is obviously royalty. He has all the trappings. His castle, his formal evening attire, even his diction and good manners. He is called Count Dracula in the Universal film but his legend descends from a real prince. Vlad III (the Impaler) was ruler of Wallachia in present day Romania. He was called Dracul (Dragon) for his defense of Christians against the Turks but his cruelty against just about anyone he came in contact with was legendary. The legend of the vampire (nosferatu) is central European in origin and goes back very far into the imagination of primitive people huddling in the dimly lit hovels and fearing the long winter nights for all the real and imagined terrors that lurked right at their doorsteps.

Bram Stoker took this legacy and created a gothic novel that followed the conventions of his time and populated it with upper class British characters right down to the damsel in distress and the square jawed leading man ready to save her from a fate literally worse than death. It cried out for a stage adaption and of course it got it. And then some. Several productions were launched and in 1927 a company opened the play in the United States. And interestingly enough three of the lead male parts reprised their roles in the Universal film, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Edward van Sloan as Dr. Van Helsing and Herbert Bunston as Dr. Seward.

Let’s now look at the film. What are its chief characteristics? It’s an early talkie. The sound is not perfect. Whether an artifact of the age of the prints used or of the original production there is considerable background noise. The sets for the most part are the studio versions of city streets and upper class drawing rooms. The sets used for the village and castle in Transylvania are unconvincing but highly evocative. My one pet peeve with Castle Dracula is that while showing all the creatures crawling around in the cellar we are given a good look at some armadillos. These are New World creatures and what they would be doing in central Europe is very hard to imagine. The set for Carfax Abbey is equally entertaining and in fact is probably built on the set for Castle Dracula used earlier.

With respect to the actors, they are exaggeratedly and understandably stagey. After all, most of them were stage actors. They exaggerate their words and gestures to such an extent that sometimes it appears to a modern audience as parody. This is probably the result of both the stage and silent film legacy of most of the cast. Probably the most entertaining performance is given by the Cockney Orderly who watches over the madman Renfield. He is an exaggerated lower-class everyman who adds comic relief and a really terrible accent to the film.

And finally the special effects. At one point, Renfield looks out the window of the stage coach he is travelling in to Castle Dracula and sees a bat flying above the horses. It is hard to minimize how laughably pathetic it looks to anyone used to the magic that CGI can perform today. I think the strings are actually visible, but maybe it was just my scornful imagination. There is at least one more bat flyby in the film and it doesn’t improve over the first. ‘Nuff said.

Okay, now I’ve run down everything about the film. It sounds like a hot steaming mess.

Well, it is and it isn’t. All that I’ve said is true. But it still remains an entertaining experience. It is a time capsule of what our great grandparents looked on as theater. The British basis of what was considered civilized and urbane is on display. And you can see the tension between reason and science on the one hand and the instinctual and irrational forces at work in the universe. And it’s interesting to note how young women are the weak point in the rational structure being undermined by the powers of darkness. Really the story isn’t that different from our own morality tales about the dissolution of the world of light into the abyss. It’s only different in that it has a happy ending. Today the forces of darkness would win and we would cheer them because of how cool they dress. And the characters get to mouth some very entertaining lines. In one exchange between the main protagonists Dracula declares in his best Transylvanian English, “You are wise for one who has not lived even one lifetime, Van Helsing.” For me that’s worth the price of admittance right there.

A friend of mine at work is a movie fan. But being a Gen X aged guy he hasn’t been exposed to the full gamut of classic Hollywood films from the ‘30s and ‘40s. Recently he’s begun a systematic review of these films. For instance, he just finished up an exhaustive viewing of all Alfred Hitchcock’s films in chronological order. He even watched the early silent films Hitchcock made. Now that is dedication. On the whole he seemed impressed by Hitchcock’s body of work. While he recognized weaker efforts he also felt that Hitchcock was an extremely competent craftsman who produced quality work. And he noted that Hitchcock innovated over the course of his career and broke new ground in several ways. He did chide him for birthing the slasher films with Psycho. But all in all he was a great director.

This month he started on a smaller project. He’s watching the Universal Classic Monster films. He just finished up on Dracula, Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein. When I spoke to him he was surprised and disappointed at what he judged a lack of quality. I told him I predicted he’d really be shocked once he’d watched the Wolfman. He is soldiering on but I could see he was let down.

After my comment, my friend questioned whether I disliked the Universal series. I told him I have a fondness for them but have no illusions about the artistry they represent. My exact words were, “Peter, they were made to scare children and simple people. They were wildly successful at doing this. And if you watch them in the right frame of mind they still can entertain.” I’m not sure if I convinced him but it got me thinking about what those movies could say to an audience today.

First off, let’s see how they do with today’s kids. I have a 13-year-old grandson who has been fed a steady dose of these films from about the time he was five. Now, they may have become tame fare for him now but he still likes watching them. He probably recognizes the relation to such modern fixtures as the Count on Sesame Street and Hotel Transylvania. And basically kids are still kids and monsters are great fun for kids. So, one audience still exists for these movies.

For those of us who grew up watching these movies their charm although thinned by use still survives. They’re like old relations who diminish in importance as we grow up but still are fondly regarded and maintain an association in our minds with the happiness of childhood (if your childhood was happy). This audience is shrinking but is still a large population.

And finally, there are those who are fans of all things fantastic. If you are a SF&F fan then how can you not, at least, have a curiosity about the origin of all those First Blood and Underworld stories? Sure, the 1930’s models were vastly less cool, what with their crosses and holy water, but even if just from an historical perspective, they should be viewed and discussed.

Being solidly in the second and third camps I feel entitled to give my opinion. And that’s what I’ll do. I’ll plow through the canon and give the pluses and minuses as honestly and objectively as I can. It should be fun. Stay tuned.

Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of a number of interesting stories including the “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “Kidnapped” and “Treasure Island.” I’ve always thought Treasure Island is one of the best boy’s stories ever written. I give a copy to each of my grandsons when he reaches the age where he can read it. It is one of the best.

Treasure Island has been made into a movie several times by Hollywood but for my money the best by a mile is the 1934 version with Victor Fleming directing. It stars Jackie Cooper as the boy hero Jim Hawkins and Wallace Beery as the pirate chief Long John Silver. Cooper was a kid actor in the Little Rascals series and also known for melodramatic roles in some big movies. Beery was a big star of the time who appeared in both comic and dramatic roles. The idea of using American actors in this British story seems ridiculous. Cooper doesn’t even pretend to use a British accent. He speaks in an obviously 20th century American accent. Beery uses a very stagey 18th century English accent. This is also the case with the rest of the cast. There is one actual brit Nigel Bruce (of Sherlock Holmes’ Doctor Watson fame) in the cast but he doesn’t come off any more authentic than any of the other actors. On the face of it, it seems impossible that anything good would emerge. But it does. It’s the best.

The story entertains at every turn. Boys from six to a hundred and six love this movie because it has everything they want. Treasure, pirates, sailing ships (the Hispaniola), desert islands, battles with flintlocks and cutlasses, and all manner of exciting adventure. The movie version takes some liberties with the book (mostly to put Long John Silver in a slightly better light) but the adaption is faithful to the spirit of the story and it remains solidly entertaining.

One of my favorite scenes is Jim Hawkins confronting the pirate, Israel Hands, while Jim is stealing the Hispaniola from the pirates to forestall the use of the ship’s cannons against his friends in the besieged blockhouse. In that scene Jim needs to be brave and resourceful and no adult is there to help him against a deadly adversary. In other scenes, the comedy inherent in his conversations with the ruthless but personable Long John Silver are memorable.

I guess what makes it timeless is the young protagonist proving himself a heroic and resourceful figure in the company of men, both good men and truly evil men. Basically it’s the same formula in the greek myths and every other hero coming of age story.

If you have a son or a grandson or a nephew or other boy who enjoys adventure (as most boys do) buy him the book and after he’s read it give him the movie to watch. And make some popcorn and watch it with him. You’ll enjoy it and so will he. Certain he will matey. Certain he will.

A lot of stuff has been said about what makes Forbidden Planet such an important sci-fi movie. The ground-breaking special effects, the plot element of a human military vessel exploring space that would spawn the endless iterations of the Star Ship Enterprise. And of course, there’s the classical angle. Supposedly the plot is an update of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

So, there’s all that good stuff. But to my mind the real reason can be summed up in two words, Anne Francis. When the angelic face of Miss Francis first appears on screen I began to see the movie in the correct light. This was an epic adventure story that rivalled the Odyssey of Homer for timelessness and meaning. Now the fact that I was a sixteen-year old boy at the time probably colored my thought processes to some extent and the skimpiness of her costumes might even have had something to do with it. But let’s face it, giant ants can only get you so far. If you want to keep the natives from getting restless you have to appeal to their most powerful motivations and if a blonde-haired, blue eyed creature with a very pretty face and extremely long shapely unclad legs is brought center stage, suddenly even the acting skills of Leslie Nielsen seem greatly enhanced and worth a fair hearing.

But now that I’m in my dotage and no longer as easily swayed by a pretty face, I’ve had a chance to re-evaluate the movie. Surprisingly, I’m still a big fan. And this is despite the obvious weaknesses that are extremely evident in such an old film. The dialog has some extremely cliché-ridden exchanges including:

The captain tells off the young woman because her uninhibited interest in the young men in his crew will be a distraction from military discipline.

Morbius displays the stereotypical arrogance of the academic intellectual toward the practical military authorities.

The banter provided by the ship’s cook is the comic relief that would seem right at home in an Abbott and Costello movie.

So what makes it good? Well, the humans are mostly likeable and admirable. The plot unwinds in a manner that allows for the gradual reveal of the mystery. Of course, the who of the question is answered long before the why and how of the problem. But the details provide reinforcement of the underlying lesson to learn. We are reminded that smarter isn’t the same as perfect.

And the special effects are still pretty good. The animation of the Krell infrastructure impresses the viewer with the gargantuan scope of the installation. The humans walking through it literally look like ants at one point.

And finally, the interaction between the isolated inhabitants of this dream world and the crew of the no-nonsense military vessel is classic. It reminds you of the stories that portray the first contact between Europeans and the South Sea Islands. The sailors always have a feeling they have somehow discovered paradise with its idyllic climate, scantily clad, friendly women and tropical fruit. The military men are enthralled with how favorably it compares to the boring, spartan existence of their all-male naval vessel.

Are there problems with the story? Yes. Morbius seems a little too dense for a brilliant scientist. The resolution of the crisis at the end is a little jarring. The solution is quite heavy handed. But all in all, it’s a pretty neat story. I think it indicates why the Star Trek series was so popular. But I think it also shows why the later tv series were less interesting. The adventure and discovery aspects became less of a focus as the Enterprise became less of a military/exploration vessel and more of a social worker/nanny vehicle to the stars.